


against all this i contrast you

by Artemis1000



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Captivity, Confederacy of Independent Systems, M/M, Manipulative Relationship, Mutual Manipulation, Negotiations, Power Dynamics, SWRO: Cassian's role in an AU where the CIS wins the war against the Republic, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-16
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-07-03 10:39:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15817215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis1000/pseuds/Artemis1000
Summary: With the Confederacy of Independent Systems on the brink of winning the war against the Republic, CIS war hero Cassian Andor is on the brink of getting everything he ever wanted - yet the mission to catapult him from his life as a sniper into Intelligence seems near impossible: convince captured Republic loyalist Orson Krennic to revive the Death Star project for the CIS. The most impossible thing about it, even more impossible than the man himself? Seeing the Death Star built is the last thing Cassian would ever want.





	against all this i contrast you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spookykingdomstarlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/gifts).



He could feel their eyes on him.

Eyes, optics, sensors were always following him when he walked through a new base or ship. Most of the time they were kind eyes; curious, yes, even intrusive, but they were kind and more often than not full of admiration.

Whenever he felt these eyes rest on him, Cassian Jeron Andor wished he could rip off his skin until he stopped feeling them sear him.

None of that showed on Cassian’s face as he strode through the long hallways of the capital ship, his steps measured and firm, his head held high.

Once, Cassian Andor had been a boy from Fest who flitted through the shadows, who would cower in nooks and crannies and disappear into sewers with such skill that he had become a shadow himself – and for this very same skill, he had become famous. Travia Chan’s best sniper, he had been hailed, a child prodigy from icy Fest. Like it always went with such things, legend had quickly outgrown reality once skilled propagandist hands were at work.

Cassian Andor the Festan teenage boy had been skilled, and he had been deadly, but he was a mere boy and he would have remained one among many if the story of the child who had lost his father to Republic violence and picked up arms for the CIS when he was six years old hadn’t made such a compelling narrative.

But it did, and Cassian had been young and sweet-faced and fiery-eyed, and the Confederacy of Independent Systems had still been in such dire need of untainted heroes a mere seven years after Count Dooku and Chancellor Palpatine’s machinations had been revealed. Who had he been to deny his leaders, when they told him he could make a difference?

So he had left behind the tans of his insurgent cell and donned a proper uniform, a proper rank, and the assignation of a sniper in the Festan Special Forces as soon as he was old enough to officially enlist.

He had grown up far away from Fest on the battlefields of dozens, then hundreds of worlds, until reality lived up to the legend other hands were still skillfully crafting for him.

Cassian nodded to a cluster of B1 droids gathered outside the commander’s office, chattering agitatedly amongst themselves.

“Do you think we’re going to battle Jedi?”

“I don’t want to be scrapped by a Jedi, I haven’t even had an oil bath yet!”

Cassian wished he could roll his eyes at them but all he permitted himself was a slight tensing of his shoulders.

Of course, they would assume. In the past few years, the propaganda department had mostly spun an urban legend of excelling at sniping Jedi for their best-known snipers. Few as there were left after Order 66, they were still fearsome on the battlefield and could decimate a battalion of battle droids easily; the merest mention of Jedi made every story ten times as interesting to the troops.

The doors opened for him and closed behind him, and Cassian snapped to attention.

He waited patiently for the Harch behind the desk to turn away from the terminals she had been studying. Her mandibles clicked thoughtfully as she regarded Cassian with six attentive spider eyes. “Stand at ease, old friend.”

Cassian did and approached the Admiral, remarking “Everybody out there is talking about going to battle against the Jedi. I’m afraid my arrival on your ship has caused rumors.”

“Jedi?” The Harch’s mandibles worked. Cassian had spent enough time working under the Admiral back when she had been a Commander in the trenches to know it showed her amusement. “The Republic hasn’t sent Jedi to the battlefield in years. They are too valuable now to waste on skirmishes they have already lost.”

Cassian inclined his head. Be that as it may, he was just as curious as the B1s out there about the purpose of his presence. He was a sniper, after all, he was assigned to ground battles and not to flagships.

“Hm,” Admiral Strike clicked her mandibles again and her six arms moved as she spoke, “I have something better for you. A favor, so to say.”

Cassian’s brows rose a little. “A favor?” he echoed disbelievingly. “Forgive me, but I’m rarely on the receiving end of favors.”

The Harch made a hissing, cackling noise. Laughter. She leaned forward, three-clawed hands propped up on the desk that separated her from Cassian. Her eyes gleamed bright red. “That is exactly why I’m doing you one, Cassian.” She let a heartbeat pass. “I know you want out, and if you succeed in this assignment, you will be doing both of us a favor.”

Cassian took the chair that had been waiting for him, ignored so far. “I’m listening.”

 

“Your droids have a problem with gossip. You ought to wipe them more often.”

Cassian regarded the man in the cell coolly.

He was older than Cassian, his hair greying and his bruised face drawn, but the deep lines that showed there could at least partially be attributed to the distress of battle and capture. The droids seizing his research facility had been ordered to take the staff alive but they hadn’t been ordered to be particularly gentle about it. Scientists could be replaced, the data cores holding their research were far more valuable in the long run.

He still wore the white of the science division – or was it the white of Intelligence, rather? A little bit of both, if the files could be trusted.

“I’m Independent,” Cassian said wryly, crossing his arms over his chest, “you don’t need to tell me anything about proper droid maintenance, _Loyalist_.”

Somehow, the man perched on the edge of his cell’s humble cot still managed to give the appearance of looking down on Cassian. “You’re a Separatist traitor.”

Cassian straightened further. “You can’t be a traitor to something you have never sworn fealty to. I have never been anything but loyal… to _my_ government.”

The man scoffed. “What government? You are nothing but criminals.”

Cassian pointedly looked himself up and down. He looked perfectly sensible in the grey snow camouflage uniform which would have let him blend in on his own frost-covered homeworld, though it looked distinctly out of place on the Harch cruiser. He flexed his hands, the right one organic, the left durasteel polished to a silvery high sheen. Either way…

“Is this what pirates look like these days then?” he asked mildly. He could only wish, he added within the sanctity of his own mind. If they couldn’t lock up the space scum, they might at least suffer the same discomfort Cassian suffered every day.

Cassian confirmed with a glance that the man’s hands and ankles remained cuffed, only then did he step fully into the cell. He let the door close behind them, locking them into the room with only the two of them. The B2 guards would remain in shouting distance, they had promised him, as if Cassian wouldn’t be completely capable to dispatch a single bureaucrat by himself.

It was oddly comforting that even with his ridiculously overblown reputation, droids still didn’t think much of his human close-quarters fighting capabilities.

Since there was nowhere else to sit, Cassian sat down at the far end of the cot.

He let his eyes rest on the man again, on his bruised face, the split lip, the way he held his left foot gingerly as if he was trying not to put any weight on it yet tried his hardest to hide it from Cassian, too.

“You have been lucky to get away so lightly, battle droids take non-lethal injuries very literally,” he remarked, and then realized a moment too late that maybe this wasn’t the best conversation starter.

The incredulous look he received seemed to confirm it. “What kind of joke is this?” he snapped. “I assumed the droids were malfunctioning when they told me I would become an assassin’s plaything but you’re no intelligence agent.”

Cassian straightened, stung despite his best efforts not to. “I’m a sniper,” he corrected. The rest… Well, strictly speaking, it was true. From a certain, uncharitable point of view.

The man heaved a put-upon sigh. “Why then do the Separatists let snipers interrogate their high-profile prisoners?”

Cassian paused, startled. His lips twitched, and his mustache twitched along with it. “You consider yourself high-profile.” He blinked. “You have very robust self-confidence, don’t you?”

The man looked right into Cassian’s eyes. That took courage, he could admit it, but he could read the fear lurking in his furious blue eyes. “I know you need me alive, and I know that you know it, too.”

Cassian’s lips tightened. Well. Such backtalk was unfortunate - and unusual in his line of work. He rose to his feet and smoothed out some wrinkles from his uniform.

“Since you have all the answers already, I will leave you to contemplate them.” He stalked to the door, all the two large steps it took him to reach it. “You’re going to accompany me to Geonosis, Director Krennic. For the time being, you may consider yourself my guest.”

 

It was a risk taking him to Geonosis.

The flight was long and fraught with dangers, yet there was no other place Cassian could think of which would show the might of the Confederacy restored better than the Geonosian homeworld. Well, at least while keeping to the short list of worlds Admiral Strike had whitelisted for him.

It should also hold certain implications for Director Krennic.

Cassian did not dare take him to the surface. The Geonosian leadership would surely lay claim to his prisoner as soon as someone who had been in Poggle the Lesser’s inner circle during the earliest years of the Clone Wars learned of his identity. The Geonosian leader’s wrath would make for a good threat but for an unfortunate reality – Admiral Strike would feed him to her young if he lost a prisoner the Harch planned to make good use of for their own purposes.

So Cassian took him to one of the space stations circling Geonosis, one of the wonders built by Geonosian skill to show the CIS’s restored might and wealth in the wake of their dark, dire years after Dooku’s fall.

The station was beautiful in a distinctly alien way, architecturally resembling the structure of a Geonosian hive far more than the neat and open spaces that Krennic would be used to from Republic stations built to suit foremost human tastes.

The next time they met, Cassian had one of the large observatories emptied for their personal use. It was a large cavernous hall built to resemble the main hall of a Geonosian queen, it even sported a giant statue of a queen looming high on the wall. Here, too, the atmosphere was dark and foreboding yet not stifling, for one of the walls was a huge window showing outer space. Cassian had timed it well so it would be showing Geonosis when he went to meet Krennic.

Cassian found him studying the planet. Uncuffed, he looked proud again and held far more resemblance to the man Cassian had studied on holopictures in his file.

“Down there on the surface, there is an arena full of Geonosians screaming for Republic blood. They have enough captives that the spectacle will last all week.”

Krennic turned to him, looking scornful but maybe also a little tired. “And you’re going to tell me I will be spared their fate if I cooperate,” he said. He did sound both scornful and tired but also bored to boot.

Cassian gritted his teeth. “No,” he responded, a little too hastily, too heatedly, and gritted his teeth further at the slip.

If he had been at liberty to do so without being noticed, he would have clenched his hands into fists. Was he truly just an assassin playing at being a spy? He sure felt like it.

“I was trying to make you understand what I’m sparing you from.” He wandered over to the window, looking out over the planet along with Krennic. “I’m sure Poggle the Lesser remembers you, Director. There are many on Geonosis who remember.”

“After Geonosis fell, the Geonosians agreed to work for the Republic,” Krennic snapped. His hands did ball into fists. “I had a deal with Poggle the Lesser. He _agreed_.”

“And then Order 66 and the Jedi survivors killing Palpatine sent the Republic into chaos, and we liberated Geonosis,” Cassian responded, as brisk as dismissive. “It was our first decisive victory after Dooku and Palpatine’s death.” Cassian’s eyes softened a little as he looked down at the world they were circling. “There were Festans fighting, too. I remember when they left. Humans didn’t really fight in the great armies before, we only defended our worlds. The greater battles were for droids. But in the chaos afterward it didn’t matter if you were a battle droid or a human, we needed every fighter we could get. It was a race for who could rally their troops first… and we won.”

“That battle you remember so fondly,” Krennic ground out between clenched teeth, “destroyed everything we had spent years working on. It destroyed everything _I_ had worked on.”

Cassian still paid him no mind. Others had suffered greater losses in the Third Battle of Geonosis. “I was a child,” he said quietly. “I remember most of the adults I knew leaving. Very few of them returned. In the years to come, it was mostly the children fighting whenever the Republic attempted to retake the planet.” In these years where Fest kept switching back and forth between Republic and CIS control, they had just doggedly kept fighting until they had outgrown childhood altogether.

Not much had been certain in these years, both sides reeling from the knowledge that they had been played by a pair of Sith Lords. Every now and then it had even looked like they could make peace over the shared sense of betrayal. This hope had never come to fruition; political differences had long since turned to hate.

“You aren’t listening!” Krennic spat, jerking Cassian out of his wistful thoughts. “Why are you even here if my life’s work means nothing to you!”

“Because it doesn’t!” Cassian barked back, eyes sharpening on him. He took a step towards him, bringing them face to face. “You and your battle station are nothing to me and that’s exactly why they sent me!”

Krennic straightened his shoulders and snorted, still unwilling to show himself cowed. If he had been in a more charitable mood, Cassian would have admitted to being impressed. “If you’re from Fest… The Separatists developed the supermetal phrik on Fest. It’s still a major production site.” His sneer deepened. “Don’t tell me your people don’t care for power.”

“Lightsaber-resistant weapons and armor.” Cassian smiled grimly. “The things we build on Fest aren’t easily broken.”

And yet it was nothing compared to the DS-1 Battle Station, or the Ultimate Weapon as the Geonosians had called it before Palpatine came and stole their work, forcing them to continue building it for him. It had all ended with the Third Battle of Geonosis. At that point in the war, pure destruction had been the name of the game and nobody had taken care to seize the station in orbit unscathed.

If the Republic forces hadn’t self-destructed the station along with all the research on it, it would have been destroyed by vengeful Separatist troops eager to wipe every last trace of Republic presence from the Geonosian system.

Secretly, Cassian had long since decided it was for the better. If either side had been in possession of such a powerful weapon in these vengeful years… It wouldn’t have been about forcing surrender or dominance, they would have started with Naboo and not stopped until… He still hadn’t figured out what could have sated the bloodthirst.

He tried not to think about the bloodthirst that remained, or what it would lead to if his mission succeeded.

Krennic sat down on a rough-hewn stone bench, still facing the window and rusty-red Geonosis below. He folded his hands in his lap. Belatedly, Cassian noted that he still wore the same uniform he had worn when he was captured. “You didn’t even give me your name.”

“I thought the chatty droids had told you everything there is to know about me,” he quipped, then thought better of it before Krennic could even jibe back. “Cassian Andor. Colonel Cassian Jeron Andor of the Fest Special Forces, currently under command of Admiral Strike of the Spiverelda Navy. Her troops seized the research facility where you were captured.”

“Your command structure is inelegant, bloated and inefficient,” Krennic scoffed, “just like the design of this space station.”

Cassian gave a one-shouldered shrug. “We are a union of Independent Systems, Director. And since Dooku’s manipulations were unveiled, we have grown even warier.”

“You are weak.”

Cassian considered another shrug but decided to make do with a withering look. “We are winning the war. If we’re weak, what does that say about your Republic?”

Krennic answered him with icy silence.

Standing at nearly perfect parade rest, Cassian pretended to return to his observation of Geonosis.

There was a darker red swirl right below them, one of the fearsome sandstorms that swept over the planet.

It would be so easy to take Krennic to the surface and let Geonosian politics take care of the rest.

Except he would be disappointing Admiral Strike, who had entrusted him with this assignment. Cassian clenched his hands at his sides. Except he would be ruining his chance to prove that he could be just as much of an asset in Intelligence as with a sniper’s rifle in his hands. War or no war, the CIS would always have a use for assassins. It would never end unless he _made_ it end.

“I’m not going to deny that the battle station project is distasteful to me,” he admitted, still keeping his eyes firmly on Geonosis. He could feel Krennic’s eyes on him, he felt them like pinpricks stabbing the back of his neck. “But it was ours before the Republic stole it. I will see it returned to my people.”

A shallow excuse to regain power over something which should have never existed in the first place. It had been one of these cursed projects of Dooku’s reign, like the many conquests which had turned into bloody occupations instead of the joyful liberations they should have been. Like the tyrants he had put into power when the people of the CIS had yearned only for freedom.

The Ultimate Weapon was the dream of tyrants, not of liberators.

“It’s not my decision which R&D goals the CIS pursues,” he said, and secretly hoped he would convince himself along with Krennic.

Krennic heaved a disgruntled sigh before telling him, “If you have done any research at all, you will know that I haven’t worked on the Death Star in years. It’s been a decade since the project was permanently frozen. I’m assuming the same happened on your side, or Coruscant would be destroyed. So I still don’t see what I’m doing on Geonosis.”

Cassian’s lips twisted into a bitter smile. “I know. They took away your toy. No funds or materials to spare, too much of a long shot. The same thing happened on our side. We needed solutions, not pipe dreams.” He turned on his heel, regarding Krennic coolly. “But now I’m here to tell you that you can have it all back.”

“You want me to build you a Death Star?”

 _No_ , Cassian wanted to say, _anything but_. He shot him a quizzical look. “Of course. Why else would we have kept you alive?”

 

He had left Orson Krennic to digest the purpose of his continued existence in the privacy of his cell – or what counted as his cell now. It was actually one of the moderately sized civilian guest quarters as they would have been allotted to a CIS bureaucrat of his standing, just with his Holonet access blocked and guards in front of his door.

Cassian’s quarters were about the same size, though far more sparsely decorated, for they were intended to suit the tastes of military personnel. Cassian’s quarters were not, strictly speaking, suited to a human occupant but he was used to making do.

It had taken some convincing to get Krennic out of the cell, not that Cassian intended for him to ever find out how much legwork his creature comforts had cost Cassian.

Cassian left him to stew in uncertainty until the following day, and even then he didn’t visit him until dinnertime – a dinner for two, delivered to Krennic’s quarters and set up regardless of his permission to do so.

As expected, he looked more than a little annoyed when Cassian arrived.

“I hope you enjoy the local cuisine,” Cassian said glibly in greeting, as if he were oblivious to the withering looks he received. “I did ask for a good bottle of Andoan white.”

Krennic looked like he was trying his best to skewer him with his glare alone. “I prefer Alderaanian.”

Cassian’s smile tightened. “You will adjust.”

He took in the new clothes Krennic wore, nothing overly lavish or elaborate, but comfortable civilian clothes of good quality and tailored to fit the human body, which had been costly enough to acquire in the Geonosian system. Cassian had, in a gesture of goodwill, ensured he would still be wearing white.

Krennic didn’t wait for Cassian to sit and invite him to dine at his own table in his own quarters. Fair enough. He got there first, gesturing in a mocking gesture of cordiality at the empty chair. “Please, Colonel.” And then, sharper, “since you invited yourself already…”

“I invited you, if we’re going to be precise.”

They fell into silence, a tense silence interrupted only by the quiet clinking of cutlery on china.

Truth be told, Cassian found himself at a loss what to say or do now that he had, essentially, said his piece.

As he nibbled on his grilled arch grubs, Cassian decided once more that he was the wrong man for this assignment. Wondered, not for the first time, if he had been set up for failure. Dismissed this thought like every other time it had occurred to him, though he took note of the weakening of his conviction with every repetition.

Krennic preferred the wine to the food. By the time Cassian had emptied his plate, there was a flush to his cheeks and a gleam to his eyes which made him look a little younger and a lot more daring, and maybe even a little bit less embittered.

As he propped up his elbows on the table and took him in, Cassian permitted himself for the first time to decide that he was attractive… for an enemy.

“I understand that Republic propaganda paints a picture of us as barbarians,” Cassian said mildly. “If you will permit me, I’m going to show you that the Confederacy of Independent Systems can be a home.” He picked up his glass, just because he didn’t know where to put his hands. “That it could become your home.”

Krennic’s eyes hardened for a moment before he laughed. It was a harsh, bitter sound devoid of humor. “I said similar things to Galen Erso when I _invited_ him to return to work for me.” He poured himself another glass, emptying the bottle. “I told him it didn’t have to be like that. That we had been friends once and could be friends again. I told him I valued his mind, and that he would be doing important work, that he would be a hero to the Republic.”

Galen Walton Erso, Cassian’s memory supplied, head of the Kyber crystal research team. When he was killed in the razing of Eadu along with the rest of his science division, it had been the killing blow for the Republic’s limping Death Star project.

Cassian nodded sharply and ignored the uneasy flutter in his belly. He had not considered that he would be meeting someone who had already mastered the game he was attempting to play. _Set up to fail_ , the whisper at the back of his mind returned, and again he dismissed it. “Then you know how it goes.”

“I do.”

Geonosians didn’t have much in the way of classical desserts, but Cassian enjoyed the sweet, savory cactus juice congealed to small, milky-translucent marbles. He popped one into his mouth and let it melt on his tongue.

“When Fest first became a Separatist world, these were one of the earliest goods to be imported for the masses. The sweet taste of the CIS.” His lips quirked. “The taste of freedom, they told us.” He gave a small shrug, dismissing Krennic’s scathing retort before he could voice it. He could see it coming in his eyes. “Of course it was manipulation; a cheap parlor trick at that. I know that. But it worked. I did tell you many of us were young, didn’t I? Sweets, these propaganda posters featuring heroic battle droids, droideka toys… There are many ways to win hearts.”

Krennic shook his head, but he didn’t look quite so scornful anymore either. “I’m not a child, Andor. I won’t be won over with toys and candy.”

He acknowledged the rebuff with a nod, not particularly bothered by it. “I hadn’t expected you to. I’m just trying to show you that we aren’t all violence and brute force. We can convince people that it’s in their best interest to work for us.” He leaned forward a little, elbows propped up on the edge of the table. “If you permit me, I will show you that it’s in your best interest.”

“What’s in _my best interest_ , is returning to Coruscant and to my work. Some of us have deadlines to keep.”

It was strange that he wasn’t angrier, Cassian mused to himself. He had been so angry before, and the personality profile had spoken of his temper and pride. Maybe the slow crumble of the Republic had torn at his pride, or maybe he wasn’t as unhappy to be here as he liked to pretend.

Cassian couldn’t pinpoint which one it was, not yet, but he sure hoped it was the latter. He still didn’t have a plan what to do if the man proved completely unbending. He had no family, no friends, not even a pet; they had nothing they could threaten to enforce his compliance.

“You know there’s nothing to return to,” Cassian told him as he stood up. He was proud of himself for remaining calm on the surface, thin as that veneer was. “If you ever make it back to Coruscant, you will be considered compromised. CIS Intelligence will make sure of that. You’re never going to work on a classified project ever again, Director Krennic… unless it’s for us.”

And there it happened. He could see the exact moment it happened, when Krennic’s own all too thin veneer grew cracks and shattered. He leaped up, hands gripping the edge of the dinner table as if he would have best liked to pick it up and hurtle it at Cassian, bowls and plates and everything.

“What gives you the right?!” he barked. “Who do you think you are to play with my life like that?”

Ah. Cassian noted the flush on his face, the anger sparking in his blue eyes. They looked brighter when he was angry. He looked brighter when he was angry.

He recalled Erso, Krennic’s own bragging mere minutes ago about having trapped and used the man.

Cassian made it a point to keep his shrug nonchalant. Lazy, even, as if all of this barely mattered to him at all. “Irony of fate?”

He left.

Something shattered against the door a split second after it had closed behind Cassian.

He lingered and smiled to himself. A man whose fury could burn worlds, indeed. What a difference to wield him from the coldness of wielding a sniper’s rifle.

 

Again, Cassian let him stew.

He didn’t return the next day, nor the one that followed.

Caged or not, Krennic was still a proud man. It wasn’t a bad trait in an architect supposed to lead a project so fantastic that it took not just pride, but sheer hubris to think you could achieve it.

It was, however, an inconvenient trait to Cassian.

Had he been a spy or a politician, he assumed he might have tried to use it against him. To flatter, to charm, to use his own arrogance to ensnare him.

Cassian, however, knew more of wielding weapons than people. He didn’t have nice little _chats_ with his marks.

On the third day, he had a new set of clothes sent to him along with an invitation for the fourth day.

It was an invitation in the same way in which he had been invited to accompany Cassian to the Geonosian system, of course, but you couldn’t deny that he was trying. Or something of the sort, anyway.

Cassian met him in the shuttle hangar, speaking quickly with the Geonosian drone in charge of the guard detail, double-checking that his instructions had been followed.

He snapped the control bracelet on his left arm. When his arm hung limply at his side, the long scarlet sleeve of his dress uniform fell down to cover it, not that anybody would care in the place they were going, and that was even on the off chance anyone would recognize it for what it was.

Cassian gave his collar an irritable tug. The purple armor and floor-length scarlet cloak he wore fit perfectly, the high black hat never wavered, and yet the stiff ruffled collar of his shirt never ceased to scratch. Basing Fest’s dress uniforms on Neimodian fashion had been a mistake.

Krennic was waiting, his face not quite purple with fury but not far off, and scratching at an increasingly angry red spot on his neck.

“You’re going to scratch yourself bloody if you don’t stop it,” Cassian noted in greeting. His face was solemn as he took in Krennic’s appearance, and closer to grim than not.

He looked very nice, dressed in white and pale greys. Cassian couldn’t say if the clothes he wore were truly fashionable on Coruscant but he had been assured so and could certainly attest to them having been expensive.

More importantly, between the two of them, they would be guaranteed to draw attention.

“The explosive device you have been outfitted with is linked to this bracelet.” Cassian raised his arm and shook it until the sleeve slid back to reveal the silver clasp. “In case you manage to destroy or steal the controller, it is also linked to two other control devices in places which are of no consequence to you.”

“Realize you’re going to regret this, Andor,” Krennic ground out between clenched teeth. His hands were balled into fists at his sides, he looked as if he would have liked nothing better than to pummel him. If it hadn’t been for the armed guards flanking him, Cassian liked to think he would have tried. “I’m going to get out of your chains and when I’m free I’m going to rip you into pieces. I’m going to destroy you, you…”

It was something of a shame he didn’t try.

“Are you done?”

Krennic apparently was, for he snapped his mouth shut and stalked into the shuttle ahead of Cassian. He moved as if he owned it and Cassian couldn’t help but appreciate the sheer brazenness of the gesture.

He followed him at a more sedate pace and took a seat next to him.

Their shuttle was a repurposed troop transport, now taking off-duty crew down to the surface. Most of them were Geonosians. A few battle droids were mixed among them, which had Cassian fighting back a grin. He was pretty certain the droids weren’t supposed to go but he was also pretty certain he wasn’t going to put an end to their fun.

They didn’t have a guard detail any longer, the bracelet on Cassian’s left wrist the only security detail he would be needing down there. Or so said theory, anyway. It took conscious effort to shove the unease he felt to the back of his mind and focus on the chatter of a group of B1s.

 

“Where are we going?” Krennic asked when they were close to landing. He had spent most of the ride in sullen silence.

Their fellow passengers were growing restless, a restlessness Cassian could feel himself get caught up in though he wasn’t even particularly fond of their destination. It turned his grin a little sharper and even a tad more genuine than intended when he told Krennic, “You’ll see.”

It had been the wrong answer, sending the man back into seething.

Cassian bit down on his bottom lip and smoothed some imaginary wrinkles out of his cloak.

Then they were landing and let the other passengers disembark first.

The dry sandy air of Geonosis hit him like a wall, and the sheer volume of the crowd swept over him a mere split second later. There was a boisterous crowd of more species than Cassian could name milling around, and closer to the Petranaki arena there were booths with peddlers hawking their wares. The arena itself rose majestically into the air, a symbol of Geonosian power and history – CIS power.

Krennic stood next to him, his body language rigid, face frozen somewhere between surprise and fury.

“You brought me to an execution,” he ground out when he finally regained his voice.

“It’s considered one of Geonosis’s main attractions. A must-see for every visitor… if you have the stomach for such a thing.”

Even in the heat, Krennic looked pale.

“You brought me to an execution,” he repeated between clenched teeth, and now he was finally properly looking at Cassian again. Finally acknowledging him in a way he only had a few times since they had first met, and usually only ever when Cassian had done something to infuriate him. His hands curled into fists at his sides as if nothing but self-preservation was preventing him from punching his captor.

Maybe… maybe it hadn’t been the best idea.

Cassian averted his eyes, barely aware of the shuttle taking off again and the empty space promptly being filled by the crowd.

“There will be no Republic prisoners executed today.” He swallowed hard, his throat suddenly dry. Yes, it had been a terrible idea. “There will be no executions at all today.”

Cassian’s hands curled into fists as well. In his defense, it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

All out of good explanations, he started walking, trusting Krennic to choose the devil he knew over the ones he didn’t.

Soon, there were footsteps in sync with his own again, then a demand of, “Explain.”

Cassian’s uniform didn’t hold much weight here, his planet too insignificant within the expanse of the Confederacy for their dress uniforms to be recognized halfway across the galaxy. As such, they had to dodge wings and elbows as they made their way through the crowd, and sidestep the occasional overeager peddler. He would have preferred to focus on that and on not losing Krennic in the crowd, than on explanations he didn’t have.

“Would you like to take the scenic route? We have time and the arena is one of Geonosis’s more impressive architectural feats.”

Krennic fell back into now-familiar seething silence as they kept approaching the building. “Do you even know anything about it?” he finally demanded. He heaved a put-out sigh. “I’ll have to explain it to you.”

The corners of Cassian’s mouth curled upwards. “You will have to.”

 

They took the long route, circling the arena and using Cassian’s military access codes and the war hero status that came with his name, to gain access to parts of the arena which would remain closed to regular tourists. Unlike his uniform, both of these were recognized on Geonosis.

And much to Cassian’s surprise, Krennic did explain.

He had vaguely been aware that the man had been an architect before he got involved in building weapons of mass destruction, only to get suckered into the construction of more mundane war machinery. He had even chosen this place with the thought to bribe him with an architecturally pleasing view. He had just never thought too much about the man he had been prior to his work on the Ultimate Weapon and any knowledge he possessed which wasn’t relevant to it. These things had been irrelevant to Cassian’s own mission.

He was knowledgeable, if biased and using every opportunity to complain both about the Geonosian style and the sweeping architecture preferred by the Republic, touting instead his preference for clean, geometric lines and stark minimalist design.

“I have been a pioneer of Brutalist architecture ever since the Clone Wars began,” Krennic told him as they wandered the cool catacombs beneath the arena. Down here, the noises of the crowd were muffled and far away.

It was, Cassian realized, the first piece of information about himself he had volunteered.

“And yet it hasn’t really taken off, has it?” Cassian quipped, the smile audible in his voice taking the sting out of his words.

Krennic shot him an absolutely scathing look, yet just for once there was no true malice to it.

Cassian chuckled. “Sorry, the opportunity…”

Much to his surprise, Krennic responded with a chuckle of his own. “At least you’re finally showing more life than your battle droids.”

“Ah.” He looked away again. Maybe he had been overly cold. Standoffish. “I have worked hard to come across as professional. I wouldn’t want you to think that anything I do has been done out of a personal grudge.”

Orson Krennic gave him a long, hard look, scrutinizing him in a way which left Cassian feeling exposed even in the far-too-many-for-this-heat layers of his dress uniform. “No, I don’t believe you’re acting out of a personal grudge.” He let a heartbeat pass in silence and folded his hands behind his back. “You rather give the impression of a man who doesn’t care at all.”

“Oh.” Cassian pressed his lips together. His eyes searched for something to focus on but the rust-red walls had nothing even worth of the pretense of holding his interest. There was nothing to do but admit defeat and return his gaze to his companion. “That’s not true.” He gulped. “My future depends on the success of this mission.”

As soon as the words were out, he could have cursed himself. That was giving this man far too much ammunition; after all, he was a man who had professed to be far more versed in such situations than Cassian would ever be. And he had just gone and handed him all the cards.

“If I succeed, I will be transferred to a different assignment, one I’ve been wanting for a long time,” he added, to at least make his statement a little bit less melodramatic even if it remained as foolish as it had been.

“Then you should try not to fail.”

“That’s why I’m trying to work with you. I’m trying to show you that we can both benefit from coming to an agreement.”

“Wrong. You’ve talked about the Separatists, but you haven’t told me what I stand to gain from it.”

“Your freedom. Respect. Power. Maybe one day the Ultimate Weapon, if your research ever gets anywhere.”

Stars, did Cassian hope it wouldn’t; the mere thought of such power in anyone’s hands made his stomach churn. The brightest minds on both sides had been working on it for many years, never really getting anywhere. He just had to hope that any chance of completing it had truly died with Galen Erso.

Krennic’s lips thinned. “I would have succeeded by now if I hadn’t been reassigned to designing cargo shuttles and listening posts. If they hadn’t cut my funds _we_ would be winning this war!”

“Or maybe you would have spent another decade chasing an impossible fantasy!” Cassian snapped back. He forced his mouth shut before anything else he would regret could escape it, and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “No. Let’s not argue about what could have been. The show’s about to start, let’s find our seats and talk about what can still be.”

“ _I would have succeeded_ ,” Krennic snarled at him but he wasn’t upset enough to be left behind when he would finally find out what Cassian had dragged him to the surface for.

 

The reason he had been brought to Geonosis was a military parade.

Cassian could feel how completely underwhelmed Krennic was before he had even voiced his scorn.

He fought down the disappointment he felt as rows and rows of the latest battle droids and troops from all over the galaxy were displayed to the ecstatic crowd, and the man at his side remained completely unfazed.

He had thought…

“This arena is where the Clone Wars began,” he offered softly, as if that could make up for the shortcomings of everything else.

“Andor, I don’t care if that’s a B1.85 or B1.86 droid down there.” Krennic heaved an irritated sigh as if all of this and Cassian most of all were a horrible imposition on him. “I care about the greater vision. I want to build something which _changes the galaxy_.”

“And you could. Maybe it won’t be the Ultimate Weapon.” Hopefully, it wouldn’t. Hopefully, the Separatist Senate realized that the fortune sucked up by research on the battle station was better spent on rebuilding their many war-torn, impoverished worlds. Hopefully, the Spiverelda government’s dreams of terrible greatness would find no allies. “But you can build something meaningful - if you join the winning side while it’s still a choice.”

“Not much of a choice you’re giving me, is it?”

Cassian had never understood the loyalty his enemies felt to a construct as flawed and outdated as the Galactic Republic. He had never understood why his enemies would die for it, even the ones who hadn’t been created for this purpose. It had always been so simple to him; if people didn’t wish to wage war any longer, then they ought to join the righteous side.

Yet in Orson Krennic’s tension and the discomfort he tried so hard to hide, Cassian could read that it wasn’t an easy choice at all. He watched the marching droids and soldiers and wondered if his loyalty truly belonged to the Republic or if he simply struggled with the fact that every sacrifice he had made up to this point in his life would become meaningless if he changed sides.

The latter, at least, was a fear Cassian could understand. He still didn’t have the slightest idea what he could do to assuage it.

Thus it didn’t surprise him at all, that when the crowd roared their approval, he once more heard the whisper of _set up to fail_ at the back of his mind. Cassian felt cold in the Geonosian heat.

 

Krennic was busy brushing some last vestiges of reddish dust from his clothes as they stepped off the shuttle, while Cassian chose to ignore the sand and dust still clinging to his uniform. He didn’t plan to be wearing his dress uniform again anytime soon.

“Good job, Andor. I have been safely returned to the space station, not a single escape attempt.”

“Hm.”

“Am I not going to be rewarded for my good behavior?”

Cassian’s face grew pinched. “I thought I would be rewarding you by taking you to the parade. You didn’t enjoy the parade, nor the refreshments I tried to buy you, and once the parade was done you didn’t want to wander over the bazaar either.”

“Excuse me if I didn’t want to get squashed in that crowd.”

Well, that was fair enough.

After some thought, Cassian returned him to the observatory with its excellent view on Geonosis. The observation lounge hadn’t been cleared for them today but with it being late at night on station time, chances were it would be deserted anyway. It wasn’t like Geonosians ever cared much much for lounging around and looking at the stars; the observatory was popular mostly with visitors.

“Are you satisfied with the message you sent to the Republic spies?” Krennic asked as soon as they reached the, indeed empty, observation lounge.

Cassian opened his mouth to deny it. Then he snapped it shut again and shrugged his shoulders. “It could have been better, but it served its purpose.”

It would have been better if Krennic had been more sociable, if he had accepted the drinks and snacks Cassian tried to buy him, if he had been willing to any public displays of familiarity at all instead of the cold cordiality he displayed. There hadn’t been any more shared laughter like in the catacombs.

They didn’t need to make a public spectacle of Orson Krennic having changed sides, maybe someone more versed in recruiting traitors would have called it over the top but Cassian had decided it couldn’t hurt. When the message reached Coruscant Krennic’s supporters would predictably argue that he had been forced, but it would still add to the doubt, and give further ammunition to the man’s many enemies. Every little bit helped to ruin Krennic’s chances of ever regaining prestige in the Republic, if he did manage to return – and thus helped to make Cassian’s proposition a little bit more appealing.

“I have to confess, you surprised me when you tried to position yourself as a honey trap.”

Cassian’s mouth dropped, brown eyes wide in shock before he spied the humor in the man’s eyes. Malicious humor, and wholly at Cassian’s expense to boot, but humor nevertheless. Cassian snorted and crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Hardly.”

“So I earned the chivalrous company of one of the Separatists’s finest with my charm and demure personality?”

It was Cassian’s turn to stick to sullen silence.

It would have been convenient to give the appearance that Krennic had already gotten awfully comfortable in his new circumstances, his jailer being a handsome, highly decorated officer dressed to impress included. Cassian hadn’t forced himself into the dress uniform for nothing. It would have been a nice perk but it wasn’t like he was…

It wasn’t anything like what Krennic was implying.

“If it were as you say I would be nicer to you.”

“You could give that a try anyway.”

Cassian didn’t reply but the dark look he shot him out of the corner of his eyes clearly said _how about no_.

Krennic flashed him an utterly unabashed smirk.

His glare intensified, even as he felt his cheeks heat up. Even as he felt distinctly toyed with. When exactly had the situation slipped out of his control?

Orson Krennic stalked towards him until they stood face to face, it was like he was either daring Cassian to back down or relishing in the fact that Cassian had effectively trapped himself by refusing to do so. He had won this round, no matter what. His smile turned sharper, shark-like in its intensity. “If you’re going to woo me, Andor, I expect you to make an _actual effort_.”

Cassian’s heartbeat stuttered and he could feel his cheeks burn hotter as he frantically wondered if the man had ever noticed his eyes linger appreciatively, or if this was just another game devised to prove how powerless he was even when he was holding all the strings.

Krennic relished in Cassian’s stunned, offended silence – and then, for the first time, he was the one to walk away.

 

Much like before, Cassian retaliated by making him wait. It was petty, he wouldn’t deny that he was driven by pettiness, but when it was the best weapon at his disposal so he would just have to settle for pettiness.

Whatever else, with his parting shot Krennic had managed to turn this into the personal grudge Cassian had honestly denied on Geonosis.

Even three days later he still bristled whenever his thoughts strayed to the smug condescension Krennic exuded when he got too close too fast and made demands of Cassian as if he had any right to issue demands at all.

Least of all personal ones, when Cassian had never…

It was terribly unfair that this arrogant, presumptuous Republic stooge should be able to fluster him so.

He read all his messages, increasingly vitriolic demands to meet with him and debate his fate, and didn’t respond to a single one.

On the fifth day, Cassian sent him the largest, most opulent bouquet of flowers he could afford on his pay - and went right back to ignoring the even angrier messages that followed.

Deep, deep down in some secret corner of his heart, Cassian admitted to himself that he delighted in reading the angry messages – and even more in closing them without ever sending a response. It was such a petty thing to do,  downright childish even, especially once he started rereading his collection for additional entertainment value.

It was childish, it was embarrassing, and it was the most self-indulgent he had allowed himself to be in… what was it? Months? Years, probably.

He smiled whenever he read Krennic’s diatribes and within his own mind, he came up with witty replies which he would never actually write down… and then he felt guilty, for he understood the situation wasn’t funny at all to Krennic.

 

Guilt or not, Cassian felt downright eager as he finally made his way to Krennic’s quarters.

As soon as he stepped inside, he found himself pinned to the wall right next to the door, a gloved fist having grabbed him by his uniform shirt and hauled him over there.

Cassian groaned and blinked at him, feeling a little dazed in that second moment, once the first knee-jerk moment of fight or flight had been suitably suppressed.

Krennic was a little taller than him. Not much, but just enough that Cassian took note of it, and found himself suitably annoyed.

“Good afternoon, Mister Krennic. Are we a little excitable today?”

He gave the man just a moment to sneer at him before pushing him roughly away and bringing some distance between them. His hand went down to his side, just to double-check that his blaster hadn’t been stolen in the excitement.

Krennic stood there, hands balled into fists at his side, and then took to stalking the room like a caged tiger. He held himself stiffly, his shoulders high. He reminded Cassian of a wild animal that had been caged for too long.

“You should know better than to attack me. I could have shot you.”

Krennic whirled around to him, his face twisted in sudden rage. “You had me locked up here for a week! Is this a joke to you, Andor?!” He stalked towards him, fists lifting up as if he intended to grab him again. Or punch him. He looked mad enough that Cassian wouldn’t have been surprised if he went for a punch instead. “Is this a joke?!”

Much to his discomfort, Cassian could feel himself flush a little at being the target of such intense emotion – even if it was all rage, maybe because it was all rage. Rage was safe enough that he could bask in it without feeling too much guilt. He forced his voice to appear calm when he responded glibly, “Quite to the contrary, Mister Krennic.”

He twitched at the noted lack of his title, a pointed reminder, or so Cassian hoped, that he held no titles or power in the Republic anymore and had yet to earn any in the CIS.

“You…”

He grabbed the man’s wrists before he could even decide if he wanted to go for a punch or for his throat and took a step of his own towards him. Krennic narrowed his eyes at Cassian, and right at that moment, he could feel something shift between them. He couldn’t quite pinpoint it, couldn’t even quite say for sure that it existed anywhere outside of his imagination but he could feel it in the sudden new, completely different tension between them.

His rough fingers were curled around Krennic’s wrists just above the leather of his gloves. Skin on skin, nothing between them. Cassian felt the tension climb, and his own heartbeat sped up in sync with it.

“You are arrogant and impossible to deal with,” Krennic ground out between gritted teeth.

“So are you.” He was so close now. Cassian could feel every hot, angry puff of air. He still had to tilt his head the slightest bit to look into his eyes. There was a tightness he felt, low in his belly, and his hands tightened around the man’s wrists in response. He, in turn, sharpened his gaze and Cassian’s front teeth dug into his bottom lip until it ached.

“Impossible,” Krennic murmured again and then suddenly his lips were pressing against Cassian’s.

His kiss was harsh and demanding and didn’t feel much like a kiss at all in that first, heart-stopping moment when their lips met. Cassian gasped in surprise and Krennic ruthlessly used the opportunity to slip his tongue into his mouth and suddenly it felt like he wasn’t in control at all anymore – not of the situation, not even of his own body which was kissing back, which was flooded with heat and sudden, sharp want.

_It was unprofessional._

He released one of Krennic’s wrists, gripping the man’s jaw hard, fingers digging in painfully, only for Krennic to retaliate by gripping his hair and holding his head still.

…Orson. He should probably be thinking of him as Orson now.

It was such a sudden, displaced stray thought that it pierced right through Cassian’s haze and made him jerk away from their kiss. He wiped spittle from his lips with the back of his hand and pierced the smug man with a glare of his own. He meant to say something scathing or witty, and certainly vitriolic, yet when he opened his mouth the only thing that came out was, “What was that?”

Krennic… _Orson_ , he scoffed in response. He did sneer very prettily, now that he had kissed them Cassian found it near impossible for his eyes not to linger on his lips, for his tongue not to snake out and try to catch the last vestiges of his taste. “You know exactly what a kiss is, Andor.”

Cassian gulped. “But why are you kissing me?”

Even as he asked the question, his mind provided him with a thousand answers, not a single of them flattering.

Sure, his eyes had lingered appreciatively on his prisoner more than once, he had had his moments of wondering what if they hadn’t met on opposing sides. Krennic, though, he’d never shown anything but blatantly displayed disinterest in him.

“Separatists,” Orson sneered. His face, Cassian noted, was flushed, too. He couldn’t tell if it was from their kiss or a lingering vestige of his earlier fury. “You think everybody is always out to get you.”

“I…” Cassian cut himself short. “I’m not going to tell you the Republic _is_ always out to get someone.” Because he was the adult here. Somebody had to be. He looked down, noting that he was still holding on to Krennic’s… _Orson’s_ wrist. He didn’t really wish to let go, either, not unless Orson made him.

“And don’t you dare! You’re the one keeping me locked up in a cell for your own amusement.”

Oh. Cassian felt himself deflate a little, and some of the heat be replaced by the cold ice of disappointment – or rather, reality. He did sneer prettily, but he still made Cassian want to punch him as soon as he opened his sneering mouth.

“You are a prisoner!” he barked, “and prisoners are kept locked up! You ought to be grateful you’re not in a cell.”

“Wrong. I’m not going to stay in here all day anymore,” Orson informed him. Yes, he just informed him of this fact, as if it wasn’t even a matter in which his captor had any say. “I need an office and assistants, but make it _qualified_ ones, and I expect the guard detail to be following my orders to the letter.”

This… was not how Cassian had expected his day to go.

For the second time today since he had stepped through the doors to Orson’s quarters, all Cassian could do was blink owlishly at him.

“Did you just agree to work for us?”

Orson finally yanked his wrist free, Cassian was far too surprised to tighten his hold even if he’d wanted to, and stalked over to the couch. He tugged off his gloves and threw them onto the dainty wooden table, first the right one, then the left.

“You’re pretty but not very bright, are you?” he asked.

Yes, Cassian definitely wanted to punch him as soon as he opened his mouth.

 

Orson had shooed him off to make the necessary arrangements and Cassian had been too dazed to do anything but go along with it.

Half his mind was still occupied with the kiss, even as he argued with Admiral Strike’s aide that it was truly urgent and yes, the Admiral would want to be disturbed for this.

He explained the situation to her quickly, there wasn’t much to explain really since he had been keeping her updated with regular written reports and the occasional holographic conversation.

“Good work as always, Cassian.” She clicked her mandibles in pleasure. Although the hologram on Cassian’s desk was small and blurry he knew her well enough to deduce the gesture from the clicking sounds she made. “You can be trusted to always complete your missions, this is why you are my favorite.”

He ducked his head. “Thank you, ma’am.”

“But careful now! Your mission isn’t completed yet. I will inform my supporters among the Harch, I will tell them we have secured what could be the deciding factor in seeing the Ultimate Weapon project restored under our control. But a man alone, a Republic human alone, he won’t convince the Separatist Senate. We need something better.”

Cassian felt his elation suddenly replaced with dread. “You need the plans.”

He had never been told as such by Admiral Strike but he wasn’t naïve, he knew Strike wouldn’t be putting so much effort into securing Krennic’s support if they just needed a project manager. The man might have been a visionary architect before the war’s fortunes doomed his career to working in the shadows but they had a whole confederacy full of visionary architects. If they needed the brilliance of any one single man, it would have been Erso.

“You need Erso’s plans,” Cassian corrected himself. To the best of his knowledge, which admittedly wasn’t much on the subject of top-secret superweapons, the CIS had never regained the political will to rebuild the project from scratch after the Third Battle of Geonosis. The Republic, however, had kept working on it for years still, for these years of having Erso in his grasp that Krennic had boasted of.

No Senator would put a fortune into the fever dream of a tyrant who died two decades ago but if the Republic had made breakthroughs in the meantime…

“You were always smart, my boy.”

His thoughts inevitably returned to Krennic arrogantly declaring the opposite and Cassian couldn’t help grinning a little. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said again and hoped she wouldn’t question his amusement.

She didn’t, Strike had never had much interest in idle chitchat. It was one of the reasons why she got along so well with Cassian, she never mistook his curtness for disrespect. “I’m convinced the Republic has secret copies, or he has them. A man like Krennic wouldn’t let his life’s work die without any chance of reviving it.”

Cassian nodded. “Going by everything I have learned about him, I agree. Getting him to share, however…”

“You have a week,” she said firmly. The holograph flickered and even vanished for a moment before it settled. “If you need to get into Republic space, just call me and you will have everything you need at your disposal. But you have a week. No longer.”

“Yes, ma’am. Understood.”

He knew better than to ask what would happen if he couldn’t keep to the schedule.

“Oh, and Cassian?” Her tone of voice had softened. “Be careful. Loyalists can’t be trusted.”

 

It was a strange thing, Cassian thought, to feel attracted to someone when he still wasn’t sure if he even liked him.

Orson Krennic still grated against his nerves every time he opened his mouth and made his hackles rise with every imperious look.

It didn’t change the fact he wanted to kiss him again.

It didn’t even change the fact that he was intrigued by him and wanted to uncover all the mosaic pieces he was made of – or that he couldn’t stop thinking that nothing truly stopped him from doing so, now that they were on the same side.

Cassian tentatively settled on yes, he was just that pathetic.

Pathetic or not, being led around by the nose or not, he had fulfilled one major objective of his impossible mission.

He tried desperately to hold on to his professional distance and not let himself get distracted by looking at his sneering mouth when he broached the topic of the second objective to Krennic… Orson. He still hadn’t fully wrapped his mind around calling him Orson.

“No, I’m not,” he said, trying his best to remain the better man as they walked through the hydroponic gardens on the space station. He had hoped aesthetically pleasing surroundings would lessen the blow but it looked like he had once again underestimated Orson’s ability to be difficult. “Nobody is going back on anything here, our agreement stands. You’re working for us and as such you are no longer a prisoner.”

Just not free to leave, or go anywhere alone, or contact anyone without having his messages triple-checked. Orson hadn’t protested any of these measures, in fact, he hadn’t even needed to be informed of them to presume. After all, he understood better than most how these things went.

“Don’t tell me nothing has changed, Cassian! You have just sprung impossible conditions on me and I refuse to accept them!”

Cassian’s brows furrowed. “But. You have to. We need these plans.” He gave a small, helpless shrug. “I’m not trying to threaten you, you are just as safe in the Confederacy as I am.”

“So says the Separatist golden boy,” Orson scoffed and picked up his pace.

Cassian’s frown deepened. He did not appreciate having to rush to keep up. This entire debate was turning just plain petty.

“You could be a CIS war hero, too,” he said once he was in step with him again, “you just need to do this one thing for us.”

“And then I need to build you a superweapon which both the Republic and the CIS failed to build within the last twenty years, and if I don’t succeed within a year or two I’m going to end up fed to rancors in the arena on Geonosis.”

“They would be more likely to use an acklay or nexu.”

The look Orson shot him could have stripped the paint off a droid.

Cassian didn’t even try to hide his smile.

A small creature that looked like an iridescent lizard hummingbird flittered around his head and Cassian observed it for a while, content to let Orson stew in his anger, and hopefully cool down.

“You will still be working for us if we can’t procure the plans. You’ll be working for the Spiverelda government, that is, since you were Admiral Strike’s captive and she got you the pardon. Your life is safe, no matter what.”

He had, Cassian had to admit, gone to ridiculous lengths to confirm this. It was absurd to distrust his own superiors like that but he hadn’t been able to help himself. He had needed to know that the promises he gave were real, that he wasn’t just a tool left clueless to make his lies more convincing.

“But I’d be doing the same mindless, unimportant work I did in the Republic, only as a prisoner.”

“Not a prisoner. Just… secured.”

This time, Orson didn’t glare, he just snorted. He even sounded a little amused to Cassian’s ears.

Their walk led them into another section of the hydroponic gardens. Each of them was a miniature version of another Confederacy world’s natural habitat. Cassian hadn’t chosen the gardens only because they would be aesthetically pleasing to Orson; to himself, they were to serve as a reminder of everything he was fighting for.

They sat on a bench in the shadow world of the Umbara exhibit, or rather, Orson decided to sit and Cassian was content to follow his lead. A group of vixus had been planted right in front of the bench, it was just out of reach of their gently swaying tentacles. The neon glow of the gigantic plants provided the only illumination. 

“I fought on Umbara, you know,” he noted, “when we liberated it from Republic occupation. It was one of my first theatres of war after I left Fest.”

It was too dark to tell for sure but Cassian liked to think Orson was giving him a scrutinizing look as he asked, “Is there anywhere you didn’t fight?”

Cassian found himself smiling again. “Many worlds. It’s a huge galaxy. But if a world made the news for prolonged ground battle it’s likely I was there.”

“And still, you remain loyal.” Oh. There was the scoff again. It seemed milder, though, even a little fond if that wasn’t just Cassian’s imagination.

“I gave everything for the CIS.” He looked down at his hands on his lap, though they were only blurry shadows in the darkness. “I have done terrible things. What would be the point if it wasn’t worth it?”

“Of course it would have to be an idealist,” Orson muttered under his breath, sounding utterly disgusted either with Cassian or himself. Cassian suspected strongly that he hadn’t been meant to hear.

Cassian watched the tentacles of the vixus; there was something hypnotic, downright soothing to their movements. He knew the man-eating plants had been eerie to the clone troopers fighting on Umbara, but he had been fighting alongside the native Umbarans. To him, the things that lurked in the shadows had been friend, not foe.

He had liked Umbara, it had been a good world for a young sniper to hone his craft. It had also been where the propaganda machine caught up to him, the last battle in which he had been a boy instead of a symbol.

“What would you do if I kissed you again?”

Cassian blinked, more than a little stunned when he realized he had been the one to blurt out this question. He felt his face heat up, grateful for the darkness that hid it. Years later, and Umbara’s darkness remained a faithful friend.

Orson didn’t answer, all Cassian had was his sharp inhale and then the rustle of clothes before fingers cupped his cheek, followed by a mouth searching and finding his own.

It was a gentler kiss than their first, cautious almost. Orson didn’t taste much of anything but Cassian liked to think he tasted of hope.

 

As a rule, humans were not particularly attractive to most species within the CIS. Too few eyes for one species, too few arms for another, not enough fur and a sad lack of wings.

It had never been a problem to Cassian, for the appeal of prestige crossed species lines easily.

He knew he had no excuse.

He still felt pretty pathetic about it, and pretty convinced that he was being played.

None of this stopped him from recalling their kisses with fondness, or from being eager to see Orson while he still could.

“You will be taken to the Lambda sector, probably to Secundus Ando first and then deployed to whatever research facility you are assigned to.”

They were meeting on the observation deck again, and Cassian had chosen to wear his dress uniform once again. Today, he had even chosen to wear it properly, complete with the medals that he had earned over the years.

He did feel appropriately pathetic for it, but Orson’s eyes were full of hunger when he looked at him and saw proof of Cassian’s status as a war hero, and he had already resigned himself to being pathetic.

“Won’t you be taking me?”

“Maybe. I have to report in person to Admiral Strike, so I will go wherever she is.”

Orson gave him a long, thoughtful look. “Or we could get the plans.”

Cassian’s eyes widened. “Really?” he asked breathlessly, and immediately felt silly for it.

Orson seemed to agree, going by the scornful-amused look he shot him. “Yes, really,” he echoed drolly. He straightened his shoulders. “I’m not going to go back to working on designing shelters while you bask in your war hero glory.” His eyes sharpened at Cassian. “I won’t stand in your, or anyone else’s shadow.”

“In my…?”

He had lost the thread of the conversation a while ago, or at least control of it.

Orson faltered, frowning.

Cassian’s heartbeat picked up again. “Oh,” he said.

Orson’s look made him feel particularly pathetic and slow on the uptake as well, but Cassian felt far too elated to let his good mood be ruined by such things as Orson’s questionably pleasant personality.

He nodded firmly. “Then we should get the plans, shouldn’t we? We ought to take this conversation someplace more secure, preferably someplace I can get in touch with my superiors.”

It seemed so easy, all of a sudden, and so fast. After he had almost grown comfortable treading water for weeks, he was now being submerged by a giant wave and swept away with it.

Cassian tried his hardest to think of it only as another mission and forget what plans they would be acquiring.

 

It was a good strategy to think only of immediate objectives, not of the moral implications, so Cassian stuck to this strategy. It was surprisingly easy at first, for there was a lot of planning work to be done.

Their target was a secret research facility on a moon in the Plympto system, which was located all the way in the Corellian sector. Situated in the Core at a safe distance from all battlefields, it had been the last retreat of the Death Star project, and according to all files Cassian could get access to, the CIS had indeed remained unaware of its existence until now.

When Krennic realized he would be unable to smuggle copies of his research off-world once the plug got pulled, he had instead hidden them deep within the to-be-abandoned base, where nobody would think to look and where they should survive, safely entombed beneath rubble, even if the Republic decided to destroy all evidence that the base had ever existed.

In Cassian’s book, the story rang a little too good to be true but Admiral Strike thought it was worth the risk and he wanted, no, _needed_ to believe that Orson was telling him the truth.

He chose not to examine how much of his need to have faith was founded in wanting his mission to succeed, and how much simply driven by the desire that Orson Krennic be doing more than toy with him.

Admiral Strike sent two frigates; Cassian felt she would have been willing to grant him more but there was no point in getting slogged down by a full-blown invasion force when what they needed was a surgical strike.

Get in, get down, get the plans and get out. It sounded easy enough, in theory.

Cassian couldn’t shake off a distinct feeling of dread.

Reality had a way of ruining plans which sounded easy enough.

 

Two days later, he knew he had been right to feel dread.

Sometimes he really wished that his instincts were just a little bit less reliable – but if they were, he would have never even made it off Fest.

Nobody was going so far as to say that the Republic had known of their very secret operation but if they hadn’t known of it beforehand, they had certainly reacted very speedily.

A change of plans was necessary, with Cassian and a small team of Special Forces going down to the surface, while the frigates kept their Republic visitors busy. Krennic, much to his outrage, was to stay on the ship.

He hadn’t been pleased when Cassian called him a liability they couldn’t afford but as they ducked the fire of the troopers who had followed them down to the abandoned base, he couldn’t bring himself to regret it either. Whether as a security risk or a high-priority target they needed to protect, he would have slowed them down – and to Cassian, he would have been a distraction no matter if he turned out loyal or not.

“Faster, faster!” he urged, his voice sharp and meant to carry over the hiss of blasters, low as it was. He let his gaze wander over the troops still with him. There were nine left now, six B2 battle droids and three Harch.

They had landed with three squads of twelve each.

He gritted his teeth against the frustration when one of the Harch got injured and fell behind, the group slowing down again. This was why he didn’t like to be right in the middle of the battle, he preferred to work by himself.

They had made it into the lower, subterranean levels of the research facility already, picking their way in the darkness past rubble and burned-out, collapsed corridors. There was still a good way to go and chances were, the path wouldn’t get any easier.

Despite all that, there was a part of Cassian which felt cold dread at the thought of ever reaching their destination, a part which grew stronger with every step they took. A part of him which secretly hoped they would find nothing but a lie or a trap, for anything would be better than finding the means to build a weapon too terrible to exist.

“The meatbags are nearing our position,” one of the B2 reported. “Do you want us to head back and hold them off?”

Cassian hesitated. “Actually…” His heart picked up. He shouldn’t. The temptation… He exhaled deliberately slowly and tightened his hold on his blaster. “Actually,” he repeated, voice firm and commanding now, trust-inspiring as it befit a war hero, “I’ll be going alone. I need you to keep our pursuers distracted. I’ll move faster by myself.”

“These are not Admiral Strike’s orders,” the Harch Sergeant protested, his mandibles clicking in agitation.

Cassian shot him a sharp look. “Admiral Strike put me in command. She’s not down here but I am.” He let that sink in. He could pinpoint the exact moment the arachnid’s resolve broke, no need to finish the threat. Every now and then there were perks to Cassian’s status.

As he made his way deeper into the dark labyrinth, now all by himself, he couldn’t shake the very bad feeling he had about this.

 

It was a datacard.

Everything they had come for, everything organics and droids alike had died for, fit onto the datacard clutched in Cassian’s fist.

He opened his fist and looked down at the small storage device, more than a little bit annoyed by his own disappointment. He had known what to expect, feeling let down by it went beyond unreasonable right into ridiculous territory.

He crouched in the space that was barely large enough that he could squeeze himself into it, a flashlight illuminating the card and the hand holding it, then the container in which it had been stored.

Everything had been exactly as Krennic had described it, exactly where he had said he would find it. It would be encrypted but there was little reason now to believe that it held anything but what they had been promised.

The small space between the walls had taken damage, the ceiling coming down and nearly crushing most of it, but by some miracle – a terrible, cruel miracle – the box had been spared. The other boxes holding datacards, datasticks and other assorted memory storage devices hadn’t been so lucky, they had been mangled or scorched by the fire that followed the detonations.

A hair’s breadth and the Republic would have succeeded to protect their secrets when they self-destructed the facility.

Cassian squeezed his eyes shut and inhaled. He tasted ash, which he ignored, just like he had ignored every other sign of this facility being a stark reminder of the fate many other places would suffer if the Ultimate Weapon was built.

Cassian Jeron Andor had always been a good soldier, he had been loyal and true, a believer in the Separatist cause before he was even old enough to understand what their cause was.

Cassian knew he should be elated. If the CIS succeeded to build the weapon, they would no longer have to fear the Republic or any other enemy. He could hear the echo of Admiral Strike’s words even now. _Once we have this weapon we won’t have to send children into war anymore, Cassian, never again._

She had also said _we will finally have peace_ and he had to grit his teeth together to keep from rebuking her that peace through fear would be no peace at all.

Stars, how he wished the datacard had been destroyed.

He felt cold. Sick, even. Nauseous.

He had always been a good soldier, all his life. He hadn’t been able to imagine a future in which he would ever be anything but.

He felt cold as he selected one of the identical datacards that had been burned beyond even the slightest chance of recovery and left the tiny hiding space.

His legs didn’t feel like his own as he started the trek back to his troops – numb still, as he dutifully reported that he was done and on his way back. The card holding the plans felt hot and heavy in his hand.

Halfway back to his troops he found a place sufficiently scorched and out of the way and put the datacard on the ground.

He didn’t stop firing at it until it was just another charred black pile of ash like everything around it.

Cassian continued walking and he didn’t feel any less numb.

 

“You failed me.” There was no anger in the Admiral’s voice. She sounded as cold as Cassian felt. “You have never failed me before, Andor.”

Cassian stood before her, head lowered, eyes downcast. It looked like shame and it was shame that drove him, just not for the reasons the Admiral would assume. He had been feeling a lot of shame, for many reasons, ever since he returned from the moon.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said. His voice didn’t shake, it just sounded very small. “I…” He didn’t have any more words, so he just trailed off helplessly.

She rubbed two of her three pairs of hands together. “Many good soldiers died to secure our future.” She picked up the scorched card and slammed it back down onto her desk. Sooty pieces cracked and crumbled. “And you bring me _this_.”

Cassian could feel Krennic at his side, could sense his restlessness and beneath that, his fear. Did he wonder if his life was still worth sparing now? Did he see himself in the arena already?

With a lump in his throat, Cassian realized he hadn’t even spared a thought to his fate when he had made his choice, no more than he had given thought to the consequences for his own future. It didn’t matter. _They_ didn’t matter, in the grand scheme of things. He wondered what it said about him that he thought he had the right to make such a decision for the both of them, and then he wondered what it said for their budding romance, and in the end, he decided he really didn’t care to pursue this train of thought at all.

“Look at me when I’m talking to you, Andor!”

He obeyed. It had never been disconcerting to Cassian to look into a Harch’s many eyes, yet now there were too many eyes, too many chances to see right through him - to see the traitor.

She looked furious, and more than that, disappointed. She knew, it thrummed through him, she knew, she couldn’t prove it but she knew. He had failed missions before but she had never held it against him personally. It wasn’t like her to be petty enough to hold bad luck or mere chance against him.

“I’m very disappointed in you, Cassian. You have failed me,” she said. “Get out.”

He did.

 

Krennic followed hot on his heels. He hadn’t spoken a single word during the entire confrontation in the Admiral’s office, hadn’t even demanded to know his own, now uncertain fate. It was most unlike him, even Cassian knew him well enough to realize this, he just didn’t have the strength left to concern himself with it.

They hadn’t spoken at all since Cassian had returned from the surface, he had only had the message of his failure passed on to him and retreated to the infirmary to have his minor injuries seen to, too much of a coward to face him and his questions until it couldn’t be avoided any longer.

Orson kept following Cassian all the way to his quarters and as soon as the doors closed behind them, he decided to make himself Cassian’s concern.

There were suddenly strong hands hauling him against the door, and a livid face right in front of his own. “You failed me,” he spat, as if he were a distorted echo of Admiral Strike, and his fingers dug harder into Cassian’s shoulders. “You…” He gritted his teeth and yanked away, scoffing in disgust as if he couldn’t stand to be near Cassian any longer.

Cassian remained slumped against the door. He didn’t trust himself to do anything else.

He swallowed against the lump in his throat. “Orson, I…”

Had he even addressed him by his first name before? If he had, Cassian couldn’t remember a single instance he ever had. His first name certainly felt wrong and clumsy on his tongue, and now it made him want to cringe away under his scrutinizing gaze, too.

“The box.” He stalked towards him again and leaned in close, though there was no affection to the gesture. Cassian shuddered anyway when his lips brushed against the shell of his ear. “I chose a fireproof box,” he whispered.

Cassian felt cold all over again.

Orson – Krennic? – stepped away from him, bringing two long steps between them before he regarded his stricken, bloodless face with grim satisfaction.

“You don’t know what state I found the room in. You don’t know how bad the devastation was.” At least his voice didn’t shake – much. It wasn’t quite a lie, Cassian told himself, it was just… an implication, a misleading one, yes, but it wasn’t a lie. Not that it would make a difference at this point.

“How very convenient for the man who had always opposed his own mission,” Orson sneered.

Cassian shook his head, though he could think of nothing to say in his defense. He didn’t have much of anything, come to think of it.

“Did you even think of my fate?!” Orson snapped, hands curled into tight angry fists at his sides. “Did you _in your boundless sanctimonious arrogance_ ever think of what this means for me?!”

Cassian felt his eyes, and his feelings, turn as cold as the leaden weight in his belly. “Do you ever think about anyone but yourself?”

“ _You_ ,” he pointed a finger at Cassian, and looked as if he wished it were a blaster instead, “you have no right…!”

“You will live.” Cassian rubbed a hand over his face and exhaled harshly. “You are still useful to the CIS.” The words tasted bitter on his tongue.

Himself, though? Was there any point to a war hero who couldn’t be trusted to do his heroics?

He would find out, he knew, but he wouldn’t know until the moment he died. Although the CIS had changed since Count Dooku’s machinations, they still had their unique, effective ways of removing problems.

“What I will _be_ is forgotten by history,” Orson snarled. His pacing took him closer to Cassian again and he looked as if he wanted to make another grab for him but he changed his mind before he could, letting his steps carry him away from Cassian again. As if he couldn’t even stand to be near him anymore, not even in anger.

Cassian swallowed hard. He swallowed down the hurt along with the fear. If he’d thought about consequences at all, he would have known this was coming. It wasn’t like knowing would have changed his decision.

“You have doomed me to _irrelevance_!” Which was, going by the angry, stricken look he could read in Orson’s eyes, in his mind somehow a fate worse than the one that awaited Cassian for his betrayal. Or maybe he simply didn’t care anymore about Cassian’s fate, if he ever had.

Cassian pressed his lips together. It had been nice while it lasted. It could have been nice, while they remained useful to another. It’s not like they had ever given another promises beyond that. “You will be well-provided for. You will live in comfort and the war is going to end soon, then you can regain power and standing.”

“And I suppose you’ll aid me?” he scoffed.

Cassian opened his mouth and closed it again. His heart paced too fast and too loud, it was distracting. “If I can.”

“You.” He was snarling again, teeth gritted and bared, and as he looked at him now, Cassian could see a man who could force the Ultimate Weapon into existence with his sheer willpower. It was better that he had destroyed the plans, Orson Krennic would have found a way to build it. “You,” he stepped towards Cassian now, decision made, and looked like he was going to poke him in the chest with his forefinger. Again, he changed his mind at the last minute. He grabbed Cassian by his collar and hauled him towards him, face to face. “You owe me.”

Cassian exhaled.

It wasn’t forgiveness. It wasn’t much of anything, really. It was certainly nothing to build a future on. But however long he had, his hero status would be useful to Orson, and he did owe him. Maybe it would last long enough until his rage had cooled, or maybe Cassian would be dead in a week’s time and none of this would matter anymore.

Maybe he really was that lonely to grasp at straws, and that broken that he trusted selfishness more than love.

“I…” He placed a hand on the back of Orson’s neck and brought their foreheads together. He didn’t fight it. Cassian tilted his head and shifted until their lips found another. Orson’s lips parted against his. He tasted his kiss, tasted something that was nothing like forgiveness but still good. “I will never apologize,” he whispered into their kiss.

Orson’s grip on his collar tightened until he was all but choking him. “You talk too much, Andor.”

Within the privacy of his own mind, Cassian agreed. So he stopped talking and kissed him again.

 

_4 months later…_

There were victory fireworks on all the major worlds of the CIS tonight. They had a perfect view of the fireworks from the floor-to-ceiling window in the living room of Orson’s high-rise apartment on Secundus Ando.

“Shouldn’t you be smiling?” Orson nipped on a glass of wine. It had been a while since he last complained about the wine being from Ando. Then again, he seemed far more interested in studying Cassian tonight than in his wine or the fireworks. “The war is over. It’s a glorious day.”

Cassian didn’t smile.

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

Orson nodded, telling him, “and so am I.”

Cassian hummed his agreement and picked up his own glass of wine just to keep his hands busy.

He didn’t know if Orson had ever forgiven him for the role he played in his historical insignificance but he knew beyond a doubt that he took pleasure in keeping the man close whose darkest secret he knew.

Maybe that was a form of love.

It had to be, since Cassian kept returning to his side, still relishing in a relationship built on their mutual usefulness. It was steady and predictable, it was reliable in a way in which few things in his life were reliable these days.

He was alive and his public status remained unchanged but that was all that could be said for his career. The Admiral must have been never certain of his guilt, or else she would have seen him punished for his betrayal, but she had been quick to punish him for his failure either way.

“I have to return to active duty tomorrow.”

Orson’s lips thinned. “You barely had two days.”

Cassian’s face tightened. “Victory makes for restless days. There is much need for assassins.” He looked down at his hands, cradling the glass. In a way, he had gotten what he wanted. With the war over, he wasn’t much of a sniper anymore, at least not for the Special Forces. His Admiral had found new uses for his talents, now that his shame bound him to her.

Orson looked at him, his face unreadable. After a moment of this, he plucked the wine glass from Cassian’s hand and placed both their glasses on the table. Placing himself by the window, he beckoned Cassian closer.

He obeyed. After a moment of hesitation, he wrapped an arm around Orson’s waist and leaned into him.

The lights of the fireworks flickered over his face until they had burned themselves so much into his mind he knew he would keep seeing them even if he closed his eyes.

He didn’t wish to close his eyes. He looked away from the fireworks, choosing to watch Orson watch the celebrations instead. “So,” he mused aloud, “this is what victory looks like.”

“Are you disappointed?”

Cassian opened his mouth but then he paused, truly thinking about the question. Orson’s warmth was seeping into him. The fireworks kept lighting up the sky. “No,” he finally answered and he could be almost certain that it was the truth.


End file.
